In Memoriam: Michael McKee
Michael McKee (December 3, 1939 - October 21, 2025)
The climax of the office of Matins prayed by the church every morning is the Benedictus, or the Song of Zechariah. Its central promise is this: “in the tender compassion of our God, the dawn from on high shall break upon us.”
Given that for Zachariah the rising sun’s rays are not mere light but rays of justice penetrating a broken world, there is no doubt our beloved Michael McKee sang along with the choirs of heaven Tuesday afternoon as he was carried to the realm of life eternal. And as he took his final breaths, with his beloved husband, Eric Stenshoel, holding his hand, our world was not dimmed but made brighter because Michael died as he lived: a ray of justice in our world.
Born the son of J Edwin McKee and Georgia (née Oliver) McKee, in Fort Worth, Texas, Michael grew up in a military household. He lived at various military bases across the United States and, perhaps most memorably for him, on the grounds of the Kyoto botanical garden and then in Otsu in occupied Japan. He returned to Japan for the first time last year in a multi-month round-the-world tour.
Michael earned a Bachelor of Arts in French with minors in history and theater from Baylor University, and a masters degree in French from Middlebury College. In November 1963, he moved to Paris with the intention of becoming a film editor. With no work permit he was unable to secure a regular job, so he spent much of his time watching classic films at the Cinémathèque Française. This education, both formal and informal, shaped him into a walking encyclopedia of film.
In 1965, Michael moved to New York City. He almost immediately took up a position as an apprentice editor at a film production company. Finding housing would take longer. After nine long months, he secured an affordable apartment from the always-tight city rental housing stock. In 1969, one of the windows in his apartment broke. The landlord refused to fix it. Then, one day in February 1970 the boiler broke and remained that way for months. Working with the Metropolitan Council on Housing, Michael brought together a group of residents in the building to stage a rent strike. They pooled their resources to fix the boiler while the landlord was absent, traveling abroad in Europe. They also filed a lawsuit and won the first-ever collective bargaining agreement between a landlord and tenants in New York State. The rest is, as the saying goes, history. From this earliest of his efforts, Michael became one of the most effective and respected community organizers not only in New York City, but throughout the State.
Others will write of Michael’s extraordinary leadership: his capacity to bring together bipartisan coalitions to secure legislative victories for tenants, his innovative and effective response to building political pressure at the ballot box through the work of TenantsPAC (which he founded), and his role in passing the landmark Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act of 2019 which rolled back decontrol of rental units and established a state-wide permanent rent law. Here at Saint Peter’s we who have known and cherished Michael have had a view into what drove him to do this work: unflinching love and care for others.
In 1974, Michael met his first partner, Louis Fulgoni. They lived together until Louis’ death of HIV/AIDS-related causes in 1989. Michael was a devoted care-taker and moved into Louis’ room for the duration of his hospitalization. Then and for years to come, Michael remained steadfast to Louis’ mother, Mary, on Staten Island, visiting her every weekend to take her shopping and to doctors appointments. He and Eric took her on trips upstate and to the midwest, and twice to Italy so that she could visit relatives in Bardi. They also hosted holiday feasts and cookouts at her house every year until her death in 2009, mixing their family and friends with Mary’s family and friends — events which scratched only the surface of their warmth, hospitality and joy in bringing people together.
Eric and Michael met on Leap Day of 1992 and were legally married in California on August 2, 2008. They celebrated their quadrennial anniversary with gusto every leap year. Their fifth (or twentieth) anniversary in 2012 drew more than 200 people to a banquet at Saint Peter’s. Most recently, in 2024, they celebrated with the above-mentioned round-the-world trip. At every stop along the way, they visited and stayed with friends they have cultivated across more than three decades together. After the discovery of Michael’s brain tumor one year ago, Eric helped him travel to make final visits to family and friends in Europe and in Texas, Georgia, Chicago and Minnesota. Since returning to New York City and beginning home hospice a month ago, Michael received a steady stream of visitors who had been inspired by him to fight for justice.
In addition to Eric, Michael is survived by his brothers, David Eugene McKee and Gerald Wesley McKee; nieces, Elizabeth McKee Bell, Jennifer Darlene Roberts and Kimberly McKee Kelly; nephews, Michael Wesley McKee, Jesse Edward McKee, Jack Conor McKee and William Oliver McKee; great-niece, Claire Erin Kelly; great-nephews, Alec Robert Bell, Cameron Barrett Bell, Brian James McRee, Brendan Roberts Ducker, Keith Aaron Kelly and Evan Zhao McKee; and great-great nieces, Piper Nora McRee and Wren Elaine McRee.
Michael will be inurned in Saint Peter’s Columbarium during the 10:30 AM All Saints Sunday Mass on Sunday, November 2. The choir, in which Eric continues to sing, will offer Maurice Duruflé’s Requiem Mass. We will welcome Michael’s colleagues, friends and family with the warmth Michael came to know and cherish in this place, and which he played such a strong role in shaping. He will come to rest in a home secured in no way by the riches of wealth or power, but by an over abundance of love, non-earnable grace and eternal embrace — a promise fulfilled much as he, a ray of justice inspiring so many other such rays of justice, lived.
Grace and peace to you,
Jared R. Stahler
Senior Pastor